Order (Selfcontrolfreak)

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Order is a five-episode interactive short film series, created in the Netherlands (but with English subtitles). The protagonist, played by Selfcontrolfreak, lives a tidy but bland life. His apartment is decorated almost entirely in white, and minimally furnished. At first we watch him go through simple routines, listening to the radio, having breakfast, reading the newspaper, setting off on some door-to-door collection task that is apparently his job. He also has a long-distance romance, and every day he receives a postcard from his beloved, which he pins to the wall. His wall is covered with postcards which tile together to create larger images.

From time to time he goes into an idle, and interaction is required, either clicking or dragging on some portion of the screen. In each case there’s an element of discovery; the click or gesture is different from last time. But it’s rare that these interactions offer significant choices. We can either perform them or not perform them, most of the time, and in many cases not performing them just means that the story doesn’t go forward.

Initially the function of our interaction is benign and cooperative. We decide what the protagonist should eat for breakfast, what he should listen to on the radio. We establish routine to be repeated later. At this point, while the segments aren’t filmed from Selfcontrolfreak’s perspective, we can identify with him and suppose that we’re guiding him, or that he’s our avatar in the story.

Later the story becomes stranger and our interaction with it more malevolent.

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IF Comp 2015 Guest Post: Lucian Smith on Ether

This post is part of an ongoing project to bring more voices to the IF Comp conversation. I have been reaching out to players and authors who aren’t part of the intfiction community, and also to some veteran intfiction denizens who might not have time to cover the whole comp but who are likely to have especially useful feedback in particular areas.

Lucian Smith — now becoming a bit of a veteran of the guest post format — writes here about Ether by Mathbrush.

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Stephen Granade on Life on Mars?

cover-finalAs part of the IF Comp review collective project, I asked Stephen Granade — scientist and science educator, author of space escape game Fragile Shells, and former IF Comp organizer — to look at Life on Mars?. He came through in style with a Twine review that demonstrates his feedback interactively.

Attack of the Clockwork Army (Felicity Banks)

Attack of the Clockwork Army is a new Hosted Game at Choice of Games. It’s a steampunk Australian story by the same author who wrote IF Comp‘s Scarlet Sails and one of this year’s Windhammer Prize entrants, After the Flag Fell. And before I get any further at all, we need some disclosures.

Disclosures: Attack of the Clockwork Army is a hosted game released by Choice of Games, with whom I also have a contract. Moreover, I received a free copy of this game for the purpose of writing about it.

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IF Comp 2015 Guest Post: Harry Giles on Cape

Cover of capeThis post is part of an ongoing project to bring more voices to the IF Comp conversation. I have been reaching out to players and authors who aren’t part of the intfiction community, and also to some veteran intfiction denizens who might not have time to cover the whole comp but who are likely to have especially useful feedback in particular areas.

Harry Giles, creator of (among other things) Raik and the spoken word performance Drone, has written here about Bruno Dias’ Cape.

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Alicewinks and “Don’t Find Me, I’m Not Yours” (David Neal et al)

(Disclosure: the following review is the part of the IF Comp review trades. David Neal requested that I check out his work. I played a copy of Alicewinks that I bought with my own money; other work reviewed is available for free on David’s website.)

Screen Shot 2015-11-05 at 2.40.24 AMAlicewinks is an ebook version of Alice in Wonderland, read aloud and fully animated. The interactivity mostly focuses on mode of consumption: you can choose to read the text, flip through illustrations, or view the animations with audio — the latter option basically being a chaptered movie. The reading is pleasant to listen to, if a little less polished than some audio book performances.

The animations are made from illustrations out of many different editions of the book stitched together. The effect is a bit dizzying. Now Alice looks like a fairly young girl, and now she looks nearly grown; now she’s blonde, now brunette. Similar changes happen to the white rabbit. Sometimes the characters are made to walk or hop through a perfunctory animation of their limbs, not far off the style of Monty Python animations. Sometimes they’re squeezed or stretched to match up with elements from other illustrations. Sometimes they’re placed against backgrounds that have been upscaled or blurred to give them room for movement.

Though the individual contributing illustrations are often very beautiful, therefore, the juxtaposition and forcible animation of those illustrations is often unattractive or (at best) a bit hallucinatory. Given that it’s Alice in Wonderland, that’s not completely inappropriate.

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